Preview: Fully Textured Borders

Pounder

Phaethon was here
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Jun 14, 2003
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Original Post:

I have figured out how to make fully textured borders.

I have borrowed aaglo's walls for a demonstration.

I haven't bothered to align any thing yet, so don't pick on me for the walls not lining up, and I haven't added the civ colours, I would probably add flags to this one for the civ colours.

The possibilities are endless, if any one has something that is rendered: sand bags, check points, towers, barbed wire, hedgehogs, etc..., they could be recognizable has part of the borders.


Ideas/suggestions please.

 
HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!

I've been struggling to find a way for a long time. How did you manage? :) Do you want to share the secret with us mortals? :D
 
There is quite a process, I will try to put together a tutorial at some point.

Great. :D Can't wait. :) I've had quite a few ideas and I toyed with the ideas of making various versions of 3D borders (modeled by me and converted), but I couldn't find a way to make them work in game.
 
HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!

I've been struggling to find a way for a long time. How did you manage? :) Do you want to share the secret with us mortals? :D

Tutorial

There doesn't appear to be to much that can be done with the territory file, it appears that you can only use about a half dozen colours and you realize that two of those colours are the civ colours.

It gets confusing, black is green, green is transparent, pink is black, the tranparent colours aren't in there usual locations, etc....

I have found that you can get graphically acceptable textures, mind you still limited by colour.

The following example is using one gradient to get the effect of a black and white photo.

Since Pink is Black, we will use a gradient between pink and white in this example (I am borrowing aaglo's walls to make these borders).

Step 1:

Take a copy of the territory file that you have made and only use one of the transparent colours, I get rid of the gray transparant and make it all purple.



Step 2:

Mark all the thing you want to be civ colour yellow.



Step 3:

Then Copy (ctrl-c, to be pasted).

Step 4:

Create a palette with pink (255, 0, 255) in the #0 position and white (255, 255, 255) in the #255 position.
Make a gradient between the two colours.



Step 5:

Pasted the copy over the new palette. You will get something like this. It looks like you have lost your transparent colour in the mess.



Step 6:

Find the transparent colour, on mine it has aways been the 5th colour, that's postion #4, change that colour back to purple (128, 0, 128).



Step 7:

Now copy the picture (ctrl-c), to be pasted on another new palette.

Step 8:

Restore transparent colours and civ colours.

Make the following chages to the palette:

Postion #1 (remember the palette starts at #0 so this is the second colour), change to gray 177,177,177.
Positiion #64 (light civ colour), change to yellow 255,236,0.
Position #65 (dark civ colour), change to red 255,0,0
Position #255 (first transparent colour), change to purple 120,0,128.

Step 9:

Paste copied picture over the new palette.



Step 10:

Add your civ colours to the places you marked in Step 2.


And here is the result.



Notes:

1) Other gradients can be used, if you used Black to White gradient, Black is Green and the object will have a green hue to it. I have gotten a few other hues to work, shades of blue. If you what to get more colour in the file, set up several gradients for the different hues, it will get tricky.

2) The borders will not show up properly when using the editor, they will appear as you see them in the pcx, but they will show up properly in the game. For some reason the editor and the game treat this file different from each other.
 
Wow. :) I'll definitely look into this tomorrow (already after midnight here :)). Thanks a lot.

Seems indeed a very complicated process, but well worth it!! :thumbsup:

What graphic editing program do you use?
 
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